Smells like...5WC

    Jason let a smile snake across his face.  He was dirty and drained, he hadn’t slept in days but the last of the alfalfa was dried, baled, stacked and brought in before the promised rain.  Sweat dripped off his face and he raised it to cool in the breeze.  Rain was already in the air, coming from the south, he could smell it.  He let his weight sag into the fence.  He would get cleaned up, see if there was some flesh under this layer of grime, go into town.  Town wasn’t close, about 30 miles as the crow flies, and he was spent but the prospect of spending another night alone was even more tiring.  It had been different when Elaine was alive.  He had something to come home to.  For a moment he thought he could smell her sweet skin-scent flush on the late summer air, but no.  He remembered another season, their last fall together.  She’d been in the orchard picking bushels and bushels of apples.  She was so worn out all she made for dinner that night was an apple crumble and they had talked and laughed through the crunch of oatmeal, brown sugar and still steaming apples, not wanting anything else.  He still loved apples, that fruit beyond any other, their light as heaven smell, even texture, solid in your hand dependability.  Sighing, he pushed himself off the fence and headed into the dark, dark house, having a different understanding of why apples had been forbidden.